Privacy Policy
This explains what we collect when you read SAUDI MAG, why we collect it, where it is kept, and what you can ask us to do with it.
Who we are
SAUDI MAG is an independent digital magazine covering Saudi Arabia, published in English and Arabic. We are not currently a registered company, and we do not claim to be one. Questions about this policy, or about data we hold, go to our editorial address:
What we collect
Newsletter: if you subscribe to the daily briefing, we store the email address you give us. Nothing else.
Contact form: your name, your email address, the topic you select, and the message you write.
Comments: if you comment on an article, we store the name you enter, your email address, and the comment itself. Your name and comment are published; your email address is not shown to other readers.
Page views: we count how many times each article is opened. This is a plain counter with no visitor identifier attached — we cannot tell which pages any one person read, and we do not try to.
Rate limiting: to stop the forms being flooded, we briefly hold your IP address in memory. It is never written to storage and disappears when the server recycles.
Why we collect it
To send you the briefing you asked for, to reply to messages you send us, to publish and moderate comments, and to understand which stories readers open. That is the whole list.
Under Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law, our basis is your consent for the newsletter, and your own act of contacting us for everything in a message you chose to send.
Where it is stored
In Google Firebase — Firestore for text, Cloud Storage for images and video. Google operates these services from data centres that may sit outside Saudi Arabia, which means your data may be transferred abroad and held under another country's laws.
Who we share it with
No one. We do not sell or rent your data. There is no advertising network, no data broker, no marketing or CRM platform, and no third-party analytics service anywhere on this site.
Other companies your browser contacts
Some images on this site are served by Unsplash and by Google Cloud Storage. Loading a page means your browser requests those files directly, so those companies can see your IP address and which browser you use.
Articles containing video embed a player from YouTube or Vimeo. Those players may set their own cookies under their own privacy policies, which we do not control. Articles without video load neither.
Cookies and browser storage
We set no tracking cookies. Your browser remembers three preferences locally — your chosen language, light or dark mode, and whether you have already dismissed the newsletter prompt. These stay on your device, are never sent to us, and are not used to profile you.
One cookie does exist: a sign-in session for our own editorial staff. It is never set for readers.
How long we keep it
We keep newsletter subscriptions until you ask us to remove you. Contact messages and comments are kept while they are still useful to us editorially. If you want something deleted sooner, write to us and we will remove it.
Your rights
Saudi Arabia's Personal Data Protection Law gives you the right to know what we hold about you, to get a copy of it, to have it corrected if it is wrong, to have it deleted, and to withdraw consent you previously gave.
To use any of these, email us. We do not yet have a one-click unsubscribe link in the briefing, so for now unsubscribing means sending us a message — we will action it by hand.
Children
This publication is written for adults and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.
Changes
If we change how we handle your data, we will change this page and move the date at the top. Material changes to the newsletter will be told to subscribers directly.